FAYETTEVILLE -- The City Council will wait at least another two weeks before deciding the fate of two high-profile rezoning requests.
Aldermen tabled a request to rezone 17 acres south of Stonebridge Meadows Golf Club after about an hour of public debate Tuesday.
Council Action
Fayetteville’s City Council met Tuesday and approved:
• A change to city code allowing developers to plant trees in city parks or street rights-of-way to meet their tree preservation requirements.
• A rezoning at 0.3 acres at 232 W. Ash St. where a duplex is planned.
Source: Staff Report
They'll wait to vote on the other rezoning, on 642 acres in west Fayetteville, until after a June 15 Environmental Action Committee meeting.
A third item on Tuesday's agenda -- a change to the street plan for developers of a 271-lot subdivision in northwest Fayetteville -- was tabled at the developers' request without discussion until the council's June 16 meeting.
The rezoning near Stonebridge Meadows would allow 30 houses to be built on a wooded hillside overlooking the golf course.
The 17-acre site was part of a larger 137-acre development called Falling Waters the City Council approved in 2005.
According to Robert Rhoads, an attorney representing Clay Carlton and Mike Lambeth of Buffington Homes, developers paid $2.5 million to extend water and sewer lines to the property, but the houses in Falling Waters were never built.
After development rights for the property expired, the City Council in 2011 rezoned the property back to an agricultural setting.
That's how several neighbors in the Stonebridge Meadows Subdivision would like it to remain.
"I'm concerned about ... taking a beautiful, pristine, undeveloped mountainside and turning it into, basically, another housing development," Wanda Altman, one of 11 residents to oppose the rezoning, said at Tuesday's meeting.
Others feared the development would devalue their property, exacerbate drainage issues and increase traffic through their neighborhood.
Several residents, including Tom Luetkemeyer, asked why developers insisted on tying into Pumpkin Ridge and Cherry Hill drives in the Stonebridge Meadows Subdivision rather than building a new street connection with Dead Horse Mountain Road to the west.
"I don't want to see people lose money. I don't want to see people not be able to develop," Luetkemeyer said. "I just don't want to see it be done the wrong way.
"If you're going to build up on that mountain -- and that's your property and that's your right -- do the infrastructure work that you need to do first. Do it right. If you need to bring in other investors or whatever it takes, do it the right way. I just don't see this as the right way to do it."
Rhoads didn't say why a Dead Horse Mountain Road connection was not included in plans for the development, but he did say traffic concerns from a 30-home subdivision are overblown, especially with improvements going in on Arkansas 16.
He said Carlton and Lambeth have plans for addressing drainage concerns and will go above and beyond the city's tree preservation requirements.
"I think it's their belief that trees sell homes," Rhoads added. "And so they want this area to be maintained as wooded lots."
Aldermen left the rezoning on its first reading Tuesday. The issue is up for discussion again June 2.
The west Fayetteville rezoning is for land on either side of where the city plans to extend Rupple Road -- from where it dead ends outside Owl Creek School to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
City planners are proposing a mix of form-based zoning districts that would allow houses, apartments, offices, restaurants and retail businesses to be built.
Two residents -- Charlie Sloan, who owns land near Owl Creek School, and Aaron Wirth, a residential developer who said he's under contract to buy land in the area -- said they're in favor of the rezoning.
Chelsea Kross, a biological sciences student at the University of Arkansas, said she's opposed.
Kross said seasonally inundated wetland found on the 642 acres are important habitats for creatures, such as the Graham's crayfish snake and crawfish frog.
"Hopefully we can work together to at least have some kind of conservation," she added.
Jeremy Pate, city Development Services director, recommended future policy discussions allowing developers to count environmentally sensitive areas as part of their tree preservation or parkland dedication requirements.
City staff is also proposing to keep land agriculturally zoned in floodplain areas or streamside protection zones.
NW News on 05/20/2015